


All My Thoughts of You

by americangrunge



Category: Love Island (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Love, Pining, bobby is a sad cinnamon roll, post break up with a slightly better ending, post villa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-16 13:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americangrunge/pseuds/americangrunge
Summary: He’d seen Bobby at many of his low points, got him drunk through all of his breakups. This one’s different. The Big One, as he’d taken to calling it. Like a heart attack.---Or, the one where Bobby wins Love Island, goes through a rough break-up, and doesn't know George Michael is dead.





	1. the aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone i am back with a slightly sad bobby. i can't seem to get the formatting/spacing to not be super weird, SORRY.
> 
> this is loosely based on "fourth of july" by fall out boy and the angsty instagram group chat.
> 
> hope u all enjoy, love u.

Bobby’s phone chimes from somewhere in the distance, but he doesn’t have the energy to retrieve it. Texts don’t really mean much anymore, not after they used to turn his world upside-down. Challenges, dates, recouplings — god, it’s hard to believe that’d ever been his life at one point.  


Adjusting to the real world again had been hard. Being back on his own, after sharing a living space with a dozen other people, had been especially difficult. Plus it was all anyone wanted to talk about. He couldn’t even grab groceries without someone bringing up his time in the Villa. He figured it’d wear off eventually, people would latch on to some other reality show or whatever, but he was still being recognized all the time.  


And now, when the only thing he wanted was to forget all of it, it seemed more impossible than ever.

After a lot of self-encouragement, Bobby drags himself from his unmade bed in search of his phone. He hadn’t cleaned in weeks. It could be anywhere, under any random pile, and there were plenty of those.

He’d been doing better, all things considered. Jonno had been checking up on him in person every few days, making sure he was taking care of himself, and texted him a few times a day. Mostly memes, anything he thought Bobby might find funny, but sometimes the occasional reminder that he was there if Bobby wanted to talk about it.  


He didn’t.

**Pub tonite? 8?**

Bobby glances at the time and sighs. He’d been moping for hours, and if he had any hopes of meeting anyone by eight, he’d need to carve out a few hours for grooming and general hygiene.  


To be honest, it all felt a bit silly. He’d gone through break ups before. A handful of them, actually, and he always came out of them fine. A bit worse for wear for a few weeks, but he went back to his old self in no time. Jonno had joked once that Bobby was made from elastic; he wasn’t made of it anymore.  


This time was different. He’d truly been in love — that heart-stopping, all-encompassing kind of love that made his chest hurt sometimes. It’d felt so easy and natural and perfect for a long time. And, well, Bobby guesses he must’ve taken advantage of that, maybe got too comfortable, because then one day it was over and his whole world came undone.

“Fuck me,” he mutters, sorting through a large pile of laundry for a clean towel. “Get it together, mate.”

He stands under the shower, letting the warm water wash over him. He’d done this a lot since it happened. Somehow it felt less weird to cry in the shower. Except warm water reminded him of that summer — the pool, the beach, those cheeky showers he’d taken with her when no one was around to interrupt them. His head tilts back as he stares at the ceiling, praying to anyone listening to make the pain stop, to give him amnesia.

_“Would you even want to forget?” _his sister had asked him once. Maybe. Probably not. I don’t know.

Except now he was sure he wanted to. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost had clearly never felt like this.

He sorts through the same laundry pile for anything acceptable. At the very bottom is a wrinkled, faded white t-shirt Bobby recognizes immediately. He doesn’t even have to turn it right side out to confirm, just holds it in his hands as his eyes begin to well for the third time that day.

  
‘I Won Love Island And All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt!’

  
She’d given it to him as one of those corny jokes that reminded them both how this all started. He’d laughed then, endeared by the cheese of it, and wore it around his flat as often as it was clean. Except now it just reminds him of what he lost, so he folds it neatly and places it at the top of his closet.

One day he’ll have the strength to actually get rid of it, but not today.

He dresses casually and remembers to put on deodorant, which is an improvement from the last few days. He finally texts Jonno back and says he’ll be there soon and to please have a strong drink waiting. A winter coat gets plucked from a rack near the door and shrugged on, and his feet carry him most of the way to the pub before he can change his mind. He makes sure not to look at any of the tabloids in shops or in those vending machines. If she’s dating anyone new, he can’t handle knowing it.

Jonno doesn’t say much as Bobby approaches, just nods and gestures towards a drink. “Glenfiddich. Neat.”  


“Perfect.”  


Bobby unzips his coat and shoves it to the corner of the booth and downs the drink in one sip as soon as both of his hands are free. He shakes his head to try and lessen the burn. “Fuck.”

“Another?” Jonno asks, already halfway to the bar regardless of Bobby’s answer.

Getting piss drunk to get through his breakup is probably a bad idea. Of course Bobby knows this, but it’s been two and a half months and giving it time is doing fuck-all.  


“Thanks, mate,” Bobby says as he’s handed another drink. He sips this one slowly, a lame attempt at being responsible, and doesn’t say much else. He doesn’t want to talk about it but can’t really focus on anything else, either.

The pub is almost overwhelmingly loud. There’s a group of regulars sat at the bar, shoving and giving each other shit as they watch a football game on the television. Two women are sat at the booth behind Jonno, talking animatedly and showing each other holiday photos on their phones. Most of the other booths are full, too. Someone pops a few coins into an old jukebox and plays a song Bobby doesn’t recognize, but it manages to drown out most of the white noise. It’s busy for a Thursday. Bobby’s skin feels flushed and prickly.  


Jonno clears his throat. “How’s the bakery coming along, then?”

“What?”

“The bakery,” he says again. The song seems to get louder as the key changes. “Fucks sake. Who’s playing this shit?” He leans halfway over the table before shouting, “The bakery!”  


“Oh,” Bobby says. “Yeah, it’s fine.”  


“Decide on a paint color yet? Or whatever the fuck was holding you up?”  


Truth be told, Bobby hadn’t thought about the bakery in weeks. He’d told the contractors to basically do whatever they wanted within budget and to leave the rest to the designer. His fingers had twitched to call Chelsea, get her professional opinion, but thought better of it. After the break up, he wasn’t sure where he stood with her friends. Sure, he and Chelsea had been in the Villa together, but they’d never been close until after.  


“Hello? Anyone in there?” Jonno asks sarcastically, snapping his fingers to get Bobby’s attention. “Alright, mate?”

Bobby sighs, finally finishing his drink. “Think I’m losing it.”  


“About—“

“The breakup? Yeah.”  


Bobby’s mouth seems like it’s speaking on autopilot. Words are coming out, but there’s barely any emotion or consciousness behind them. It’s like talking to a shell of a person, Jonno thinks, and it’s not far off from the truth. He’d seen Bobby at many of his low points, got him drunk through all of his breakups. This one’s different. The Big One, as he’d taken to calling it. Like a heart attack.

“Have you, like, spoken to her? At all?” Jonno speaks slowly. He’s not sure if it’s okay to talk about her, the breakup. He’s not sure if Bobby’s there yet.

“No.”  


Bobby wishes he has. A _‘fuck you, Bobby, I never want to hear from you ever again’ _would’ve been fine. Anything to hear her voice again. But it’d been eight weeks of silence. Eight weeks of hoping she’d call or text, eight weeks of staring at his phone willing himself the courage to take initiative, to just call her and say he’s sorry for everything and that he can’t live without her. But he doesn’t. He just deletes all the social media apps from his phone and changes his wallpaper.  


He couldn’t bring himself to delete the pictures. The old texts. The voicemails. He knows he has to if he wants to move on. Maybe it’d be easier to get a whole new phone, throw this one in the river and try to come out on the other side of this one, too.  


He’ll do that one day, he promises himself, but not today.

Maybe Bobby had watched one too many romantic comedies because he’d expected the pain to go away after a few frames. He’d expected her to text out of the blue and tell him she was on a train and she’d be there in a few hours, and maybe they could talk this out over takeaway. Maybe forget it ever happened and go back to being in love and happy. And each day it never happened, Bobby just felt worse. His hopes had been so high that the smallest setback tore him apart, reopening a wound that never had a chance to heal.

Being there, in that dingy pub, four and a half drinks deep with Jonno, Bobby realizes a lot of things. The first is that he’ll never be good at forgetting. No amount of alcohol could keep her off his mind. No hangover is ever going to be a strong enough distraction. His second realization is that he wants more than anything to just go back, wherever that is. Four months, two weeks, on a redeye back to Spain — he doesn’t care, he just wants to be anywhere else. Anywhere that doesn’t remind him of her.

He shares a plate of chips with Jonno, a futile attempt to sober up before walking home. They talk about her and how he’s feeling. He tosses a few bills on the table and shrugs his jacket back on. Jonno asks if he’ll see him round his for FIFA soon. Bobby says he doesn’t know.  


“At least let me know you got home all right, yeah?” Jonno says, giving his friend a hug.  


He spends the walk to his flat wishing his life away. Wishing she’d come back. Wishing he wasn’t such a wreck. Wishing he’d booked a year-long holiday the minute they’d broken up because spending his days cooped up in his flat wasn’t doing him any favors. Bobby wishes a lot of things that will never come true and, frankly, he’s suffocating.  


But what’s he supposed to do? He can’t stand being in his flat and he can’t stomach being away. Everything inside still smells like her, and everyone outside looks like her. Sometimes he’d stumble into the bathroom the morning after a long night of drinking and find one of her hair ties discarded on the floor before having to shove his face into the toilet. He’d let his parents or his sister or one of his mates drag him to a restaurant and he’d see her favorite wine on the menu. He’d close his eyes to sleep, teetering on the edge of exhaustion, and see her in his dreams.

A heavy sigh escapes his lips as he tosses his keys onto the coffee table. As he reaches his bedroom, he kicks off his shoes and lays on a bed that now feels foreignly large.

Eventually the emptiness will turn into acceptance and he’ll be able to move on, but that day isn’t today.  


He grabs his phone and scrolls through his music library. He’d been curating the perfect break up playlist for weeks because he was too depressed to bake or go out and he needed affirmation that other people had felt this shitty before, too. He could listen to other people’s pain and heartache and not feel so alone.  


As if by instinct, he scrolls to the bottom half of the playlist and finds what he wants. He presses play on the song he’d had on repeat for days — “I Need My Girl” by The National. Of course it’s depressing as hell, but he’d grown tired of Radiohead and The Smiths, a proper British break up soundtrack.  


The song plays a few times before he’s fighting off sleep, fighting off those inevitable dreams where they’re still together, laughing until they cry, making love and waking up tangled in one another. Bobby hates sleeping these days because he can’t stand waking up from those dreams. Can’t stand having her ripped away from him over and over, tearing him apart as if it’s the first time he’s lost her.  


Jonno can wait until tomorrow.

Sleep reaches out to grab him and he’s almost there, almost lets go completely, when he hears his phone vibrate from his nightstand. He groans, reaching for it blindly.  


“Jonno, I’m fuckin’ half asle—“

“Bobby?”

  
He blinks. Once and then twice and then ten more times because he’s dreaming, surely. The last thing he remembers is listening to that song, and he thought he hadn’t gone completely under, but this is just another of those dreams—

“Hello? Bobby, are you—“

“Yeah,” he croaks. He doesn’t care if it’s a dream. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“I, um — I don’t have any idea why I’m calling, actually. Did I — were you sleeping? I can call back—“  


Bobby sits up straight, back flush against the headboard. The room spins. “No, it’s fine,” he says. He pinches the bridge of his nose because what the fuck is happening and why is he crying and why is the room still fucking spinning. “Gonna be honest, lass, I’m pretty fuckin’ drunk—“  


He hears a sharp intake of breath through the phone. “Oh. Okay. Why don’t I just call back tomorrow? It’s almost half-two, I honestly didn’t think you’d answer—“  


“Please don’t hang up,” Bobby says. His voice is thick and raspy, either from all the drinks or the two minutes of sleep he’s not sure. “I don’t — I should’ve been the one to call. And I’m sorry, okay? For everything. For hurting you and pushing you away and that time I was fuckin’ starving and ate your takeaway before I could get it home and had to go back and get you another one—“  


“What?”  


He knows he’s not making any sense. The room is still spinning and, god, fuck Jonno for getting him this drunk. He’s trying to think, separate his thoughts into What’s Important to Say Now and What Can Wait Until Later. Only everything’s jumbled. There’s two months of thoughts to be said and he’s not sure if he needs to say it all now, if she’ll ever call again.

“I’m drunk,” he says hopelessly.

“I know.”  


“I don’t — I’m not sure this is real.”

She sighs. “It wasn’t really fair of me to do this — to just call out of the blue in the middle of the night. But I... Bobby, I couldn’t—“

“Please don’t cry,” he says, trying desperately to speak around the lump in his own throat. “Please, babe, don’t cry when I can’t be there to hold you.”  


The words come out before he can stop them. Alcohol at its finest. He knows he has no business using nicknames, of bringing their relationship back to that place, but he can’t pretend he’s not still in love with her. That he doesn’t still keep that same affection for her. That he’d still do anything she asked of him.  


She sniffles. “I didn’t think I could go another second without hearing your voice,” she says quietly. Her words are small, somehow, like she’s hoping Bobby can’t hear them.  


Except he can, and they make his chest hurt. “I — I don’t know what to say, lass. I... yours is all I’ve wanted to hear since you left.”  


There’s quiet for a long time. Bobby can’t come up with the right words to convey how sorry he is, how fucked his life has been without her in it, and the goddamn room is still giving him motion sickness. He thinks back to that first day in the Villa and tries to muster up that confidence again. Except it’d all been a joke then, because he hadn’t thought there’d be a chance in hell she’d choose him. Not over the other lads. Thinking about everything that came next just makes his stomach ache.

That first kiss. First date. First time in the hideaway, when he first felt himself falling. First time he told her he loved her.

“I still do,” he thinks out loud.  


“What?”

Shit. “Nothing,” he says, though his brain is screaming at him to tell her the truth. “Just drunk. Half asleep.”  


“I should’ve asked before, but... are — are you... you know.”

Bobby can’t think about anything besides telling her he loves her. “Hm?”  


“Alone,” she finally says, her voice barely a whisper. If he’s not, she can’t handle knowing it, but she needs to know.  


He does his best Michael Cera impression which, in his state, is really bad. “Almost always, yeah.”  


Jesus Christ, a fucking Arrested Development reference. Now, at a time like this? This is the phone call he’d spent weeks hoping for, and that was his brilliant contribution. No wonder she broke up with him. He’s insufferable.

“Was that...”  


Bobby squeezes his eyes shut, full of regret. “Yes, sorry, not appropriate—“  


Except a small snort of laughter escapes her, and Bobby opens one eye. He pulls the phone away from his ear and stares at it, still unconvinced this isn’t a dream, and when he returns it to his ear she’s full on howling.

“I don’t know why I said that,” he says. He’s small and insecure and 17 again.

He imagines her wiping a tear from the corner of her eye when she says, “It was a very you thing to say. It was getting proper serious in here.”

“Can I ask why, uh — why you called?” Bobby doesn’t want to say it, but alcohol wants him to. “Now? After, er ... so long.”

_So long_. Bobby snorts in his head — he can’t tell her he has their break up timed down to the minute, and every single one has been pure hell.

“Oh, right,” she says, “of course you’d want to know why I called.” She takes a deep breath. Bobby sees her parted, full lips in his mind — lips he’d kissed a million times and committed to memory. “I’d gone out with Lottie last night. She’s, uh, in London for an event so we had some drinks. She asked me how you were.”  


_Awful, _Bobby finishes in his head. _Usually drunk, sometimes too stoned to get off the couch. Nothing’s working, if she’s got any other ideas._

“She said she’d had some vision — saw in her tarot cards that you’d been a mess, moping around and all that, hadn’t been too well.”

Bobby nearly chokes. “She really saw all that?”  


A soft laugh from the other end of the phone. “No, I’m fucking with you. But she did ask me how you were taking it and I felt pretty shit when I had to tell her I didn’t know.”

“Oh.” He finally exhales. “Right. ‘Course she didn’t.”  


“I wasn’t too far off, though, was I?”

  
Bobby swallows, hard, because he can see a tiny opening if he squints hard enough. “Pretty bang on, to be honest.”

“Yeah.” A few seconds of agonizing silence. “I’ve not been much better.”  


Bobby doesn’t know what to say, so he says something completely stupid: “How’s London?”

She coughs. “Er, same as always, I suppose. Bit lonely.”

“I found that shirt you bought me today. The Love Island one.”  


“Yeah? Did you toss it?”

“No,” he says. “Couldn’t. I mean, just because we... you know. Broke up? It still means a lot to me. Bit sentimental, I guess.”

More agonizing silence.

“Listen, Bobby, I didn’t actually call because of my conversation with Lottie. I mean, I did, but—“ Her voice is thick the way his always was when he started to get upset. “I took the week off work. I got drunk and watched the whole season.”  


Fuck, now he’s crying again. He’d thought about doing the same, thought maybe he deserved to be tortured in that way, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he watched her intro from the first episode over and over. She’d had bad luck in relationships, always seemed to put in more than she got in return. Maybe she wouldn’t find her soulmate on Love Island, but what if she did? Seeing her laughing and smiling and so carefree, he fell in love with her all over again.  


“Oh,” is all he can manage to say.

“I saw you eating Lottie’s lip balm, of all things, and—“

“It was good lip balm,” his drunk brain says. Sober Bobby never would have dared.

“Yeah, you said as much.” She takes a deep breath, always so much better at things like this than he was. “I just... I realized I’ll never meet another guy who just shamelessly eats someone’s lip balm. I’ll never... I don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to what?” Bobby asks. _Please say what I hope you mean,_ his brain begs her.

“I don’t want to fall in love with someone else.”  


Black. His mind goes blank and all he can see is black. The sound of his breathing is miles away, the street noise sounds like it’s underwater, and all of a sudden he feels too big for his body. Is this an anxiety attack? Maybe. His hands are sweating buckets and he can barely keep hold on his phone.

“What — what are you saying?”  


“I don’t really know,” she says, slow and deliberate. “My — the firm is sending me on a business trip next week. To Glasgow. Not far from the flat...”  


The flat. Not Bobby’s flat. The flat.  


“...thought maybe we could. You know. Meet up for dinner? If that’s something—“  


“Yes.”  


“Okay.” She sounds surprised, almost. “Okay, that’s good — really good to hear, Bobby.”

He glances at the clock. It’s nearly five-o’clock and he’s almost delirious from exhaustion and everything he had to drink. But his name on her lips sounds like a song he’d been trying to remember the words to for ages.  


Fuck it, he thinks. “I love you,” he says. “I’m still drunk and I think I’m going insane but I still love you more than anything, and whenever you get here I’m going to make you dinner. And whatever else you want. I’d do anything for you, you know? Always. And you’re going to think it’s gross, but I haven’t even washed my sheets since you left because there’s still one spot that smells just like you, and—“

“Ew, Bobby, please wash—“  


“And I kept all the hair ties I’ve found in a little box. I was going to send it to you in the post, but I didn’t know if you’d want them. Are they important? Like, to girls? Their hair ties?”

“Not real—“  


“Can you just tell me you love me? Even if you don’t anymore,” he says, knowing it isn’t fair to ask if it isn’t true, but he needs to hear it.  


Her breath is shaky. “I do, Bobby. I love you. I’ve been a right mess without you.”

“Me too.”

She must’ve looked at the time, too, because there’s a tiny gasp. “Oh, Christ. It’s after five.”

“I know.”

  
“I still need some time,” she says, “to sort out my head. But I’m flying in next Wednesday. I’ll text you?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Okay,” she agrees. “Bye, Bobby.”  


The line beeps a few times as the call disconnects and Bobby keeps it held up to his ear just in case, like one of those seashells people say you can hear the ocean in.

_Next Wednesday._

_Mess without you._

_I don’t want to._

_I love you._

Her words echo around him, embracing him like a warm blanket. For the first time in months, he doesn’t feel quite so hopeless when he wakes up.


	2. the breakup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing apart is weird, he thinks. It happens slowly, little by little, just enough so that you don’t notice it at first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! i've decided to turn this into a trilogy. i just couldn't give up on angsty, sad bobby. i'm hoping i'll have the last chapter out soon.
> 
> shoutout to the insta group chat and the breakup playlist i made specifically for this story.
> 
> hope you enjoy. feedback is always appreciated. love u all <3

Rain patters against the windows of the flat, light at first until the wind had started howling. It’s November, and from Bobby’s spot on the couch he can see a strand of gold Christmas lights an overzealous neighbor had hung up prematurely. The rain blurs them, gives them a haunting bokeh effect, but it’s calming. Bobby thinks he could get lost in them for hours.

The streetlights had shut off hours ago. It’s late. He knows he should probably just give up and go to bed, but his body remains a horizontal plane on the couch, all aching bones and pins and needles. On the television in front of him, a man and woman share a kiss that seems to leave them both breathless. A pang of jealousy hits Bobby so hard he has to cough to remind himself how to breathe. To remember that his lungs work.

He fishes his phone from his pocket and tries not to be disappointed at an empty screen. No missed calls, no new text messages. This isn’t a particularly new phenomenon; not lately. But Bobby turns his attention back to the television, because if he thinks about how distant they’ve become lately, he’ll probably cry.

Growing apart is weird, he thinks. It happens slowly, little by little, just enough so that you don’t notice it at first. And then you realize its been weeks since you’ve touched, since you’ve come home from work and talked about your days, since she laughed at your jokes. So long that you can’t remember the twinkle in your partner’s eye, either because it’s gone permanently or you simply can’t remember. And then growing apart feels insurmountable. That’s where they are, in the insurmountable part of it all.

This happens to all couples, he’d tried to reason with himself, it’s not a big deal. A lot of life had happened in the time since the show. Those first four months had been brutal, jam-packed with interviews and photoshoots and financial planners. The next few months had been spent making up for lost time. She’d made the move to Glasgow (in a flat they’d both picked out, because she’d wanted one that looked especially Scottish, whatever that meant) and finished up her postgraduate program at the university there. Bobby hooped and hollered at her graduation ceremony, beamed in all the photos, and wrapped himself in the warm feeling of how proud he was of her. His girl, ready to take on the world, and she would. Bobby knew she would. But there'd been a small part of him that'd been jealous too, because she was off accomplishing all these great things and he'd decided to stay on at the hospital. At least until things calmed down.

Except they never really had, and that was the trouble, wasn’t it?

**Should I leave the door unlocked??** he typed into their text chain. And then he deleted it because, honestly, it was nearing one-o’clock in the morning and he still hadn’t heard from her.

_She’s stressed and working herself to death._ Deep down, in some part of himself he keeps tucked away, he knows this. It hadn’t taken her long to find a job after graduating. After all, the country was in the midst of a political crisis. It was all hands on deck, or whatever the fuck Graham had said that one time. Everything was chaos all of the time.

He’s plunged into darkness as he shuts off the TV. He doesn’t bother checking his phone a second time as he turns the lock on the door and climbs the stairs to their bedroom, unable to shake the way his stomach sinks lower with each step.

It’s all he can do not to cry when he wakes up a few hours later, still alone.

Another six days pass before they have a day off together.

Six days of Bobby waking up with the sun, readying himself for work in the dark, and falling asleep alone. Six days of anticipating a midday text asking how his day is going, the kissing emoji with the little heart, and the gentle reminder that she loves him, only to get nothing. Six days of preparing dinner for two only to put her half in a storage container in the fridge, mindlessly flicking through television channels as he eats alone on the couch. Six days of feeling like he’s living with a ghost because he never really sees her, just gets subtle hints every now and then that she’s around: her coat on the rack by the door, the faint smell of her perfume, the missing leftovers.

And it’s all a bit much, really. His heart aches all of the time.

On day six, Bobby drags himself out of bed around noon. She’d fallen asleep in her work clothes again and he figures it’s best not to wake her. Downstairs, he busies himself with coffee and breakfast. They’d done this together so many times, her sat on the counter, looking infinitely small in one of Bobby’s oversized t-shirts, as he moved around her, weightless, as if on autopilot. They used to laugh — not really at anything, just with each other — and she’d always drink her coffee too soon and swear as she burnt her tongue.

“Oi! Fuck,” Bobby can hear her say in his mind, and it still sounds so perfect, even from a million miles away.

He’s sat at the kitchen counter, wondering what to do with the stack of pancakes that’s too high, when he hears her padding down the stairs. She rounds the corner and, for the first time in their relationship, Bobby steels himself. He’s waiting for her to say something, anything.

Instead, she fetches a mug from a cabinet, pours herself a cup of coffee, and drinks it black. That’s new.

Finally, her eyes lock on him and he can see how exhausted she is. There’s no twinkle. And he wonders, briefly, if he’s being too hard on her, on their relationship. Because everything she’s feeling, struggling with, is right there on her face. There’s no attempt to hide it, no sweeping it under the rug.

“Good morning.”

Her voice is different, Bobby thinks. Rougher. The edges razor-sharp where they used to be soft and inviting.

“More like afternoon,” Bobby replies, and, oh, he would be shit at poker. Can’t hide the way he’s feeling for all the money in the world.

And she’s brilliant, isn’t she, because she knew before he even opened his mouth how this was going to go.

“Alright?”

It’s an empty question. Usually when someone asks if he’s alright, there’s a look of concern. A hand gently grabbing his. Reassurance. The feeling that he can be honest and maybe the person asking will care about his response.

But it’s empty.

“Yeah.” So he lies. “‘Course.”

“Are you sure?”

Maybe this angers him more than it should. Maybe he thinks she shouldn’t have waited so long to check on him, shouldn’t have waited until everything between them had gone to shit. Maybe he should’ve left the expletive out of his response (“Are you fuckin’ serious right now?”).

Maybe he should’ve done a lot of things before reaching this point, but he didn’t, and here they are.

He’s never sworn at her before. It stings, hurts like hell, the way her shoulders slump. He realizes too late she hadn’t been looking for a fight.

“What?” she asks, and her voice is small. Her slender fingers reach up to touch her lips, maybe to check if this is a dream.

At this moment, if she’s made of ice, Bobby is carved from fire. “What do you mean _what_?”

“You just seemed off. I was just...” She trails off, eyes on the floor as the hand gripping her mug starts trembling.

“Just what? Remembering I exist?”

She frowns, and Bobby’s skin feels like it’s on fire. The room is too hot, too small. “That’s not fair,” she whispers, and there’s a heaviness there. Emotion. It makes Bobby’s chest hurt.

But his heart hurts, too, and instead of talking himself down, apologizing, salvaging what’s left, he gathers all the frays and sets them on fire. Sets them right the fuck on fire.

“Not fair? You know what’s not fair?” He’s standing now but still feels two feet tall. “Falling asleep alone every night. Eating dinner alone every night. Waiting around like a numpty for a call or a simple fuckin’ text, every night. Feeling like I’m living with a bloody stranger instead of my girl—“

“That’s enough, Bobby—“

“—Wondering why you flinch every time I touch you lately. Wondering why I get so jealous seeing strangers holding hands in the street. Wondering why I’ve seen mates more than you in the past month.” Then, without thinking, he adds, “Wondering if this is really how it all ends.”

She looks like her soul’s been knocked straight out of her. She sets her mug on the counter, hands still trembling, as she wraps her arms around herself. To protect herself from me, Bobby thinks. And he knows he’s gone too far. Knows he can’t take it back.

“What’d you say?” she asks, voice breaking at all the wrong parts.

“Nothing, lass, I’m—“

“That last part.” God, her voice. “Say that last part again.”

“Please,” he begs, “I didn’t...”

Only he did. He did mean it. Did wonder if this is how it ends, a violent car wreck of what-ifs and regrets and too many things left unsaid.

“Is that what you want?” she asks, her arms still protecting her heart from him. They’ve never had to do that before. “It to be over?”

Bobby’s not religious, not really, but he starts praying. “Lass—“

“I didn’t... I didn’t do this on purpose,” she says, her eyes narrowing at the mere thought of it. “I wouldn’t.”

“I know,” Bobby says around the lump in his throat.

Finally she looks at him, and all the air gets sucked from Bobby’s lungs. Her cheeks are flushed and streaked with tears he wishes he couldn’t see. So he looks away.

“Is it what you want?” she asks again, her words punctuated by a silent prayer for him to say no. That he loves her more than this argument and they’ll get through it, just like the others before this one. That he’s sorry and can they please just go back to bed and start over?

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t say any of those things.

Instead, he says, “Don’t you think it might be best, love?” in an impossibly small voice, and he says nothing else as he watches her heart break in half right in front of him.

“No,” she finally says. “No, of course I don’t fucking think it’d be best.”

And, well, she’s never been one to stay where she’s not wanted, has she?

Upstairs, she packs enough of her things to make the room feel empty. She has a panic attack and talks herself through it. Drinks some water and cries. A lot. Rushes to the bathroom once or twice because she feels like she’s going to throw up. Feels the crushing weight of her world absolutely falling apart, because fuck, where did this come from? Why was Bobby doing this?

_Bobby_

_Bobby_

_Bobby_

There’s a lot of regret in this moment. She knows she’s worked too much. Neglected the only person in her life who truly mattered. And she knows, she knows, _she knows_, but it’s too late. Bobby doesn’t want this anymore. Doesn’t want her. Doesn’t want them.

Downstairs, Bobby shrugs on his coat and pulls on a pair of shoes. The door slams behind him as his feet carry him to Jonno’s, where he drinks himself to sleep every night for three days.

Most of her stuff is gone by the time he gathers enough courage to finally go home, and what’s left behind is packed neatly into boxes. There isn’t as much as Bobby thought there should’ve been.

He wonders what she’s told everyone — her family, her friends, her job — about why she’s suddenly alone. Why she’s there and he’s here and why she isn’t coming back.

Deep down, in that same part of himself he kept tucked away, he knows she’s not coming back.

Permanent.

_Don’t you think it might be best, love?_

In his desperation to get to Jonno’s, he’d forgotten his phone on the counter. By the time it’s charged, there’s only one text from her that he reads over and over until tears blur his vision and he’s a crumpled mess on the bedroom floor.

**I’m sorry this is how it ended. You are and always will be the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I truly hope you know how much I love you. x**

Her brother comes by the next afternoon for the rest of her things and doesn’t speak a word to Bobby as he loads them. There’s no animosity, not really, they’ve just got nothing to say to one another. Bobby’s mind is screaming at him to ask how she is, to please just leave her things here because he can fix it. He can, he knows he can, he just needs time.

Bobby watches as the last box gets loaded into her brother’s car, the slamming of the trunk ringing out like a gunshot. Louis almost looks sympathetic as he folds himself into the drivers seat. Almost. Last chance, Bobby tells himself.

“Hey, Lou?” Bobby calls after him, jogging over to the open window. “Is — is she, you know. Alright?”

Louis sticks the key in the ignition and turns it over. “Nah, mate.”

Bobby feels like he’s been shot. “Oh,” he says. “She staying with you, then?”

“Yeah, for a bit.”

London, then. She’s back in London.

Louis flicks his blinker and Bobby speaks hurriedly. “I know... I know I’ve got no right to ask, but could you tell her something?” His eyes are pleading. “For me.”

Louis gives him a look. He’d watched some of the episodes with their parents, was there when Bobby had texted them for the first time way back when. The two of them had always gotten on, and Bobby knows that’s the only reason why Louis agrees.

“Can you just...” God, the seams of his entire world have come undone. Spiraling is nice, he thinks; it’s okay. “Can you tell her that I’m sorry?”

Louis looks right through him. “That it?”

Bobby shoves his hands in his pockets. “I mean, I’ve got a lot more to say. How much time do you have?”

“Well,” Louis says, checking an imaginary wristwatch, “I’ve got an eight hour drive back to London to give my sister all this shit I’ve just loaded up. Y’know, since you broke up with her?” And, okay, Bobby deserves that. “So I’d say you’ve got about thirty seconds.”

“Just tell her I love her. Please.”

Louis seems to soften, just a little bit. He nods. “Yeah, okay, I’ll pass along the message.” Then, before he pulls onto the street, “Take care of yourself, man.”

And then he’s gone.

And so are the last of her things.

And it’s not fair, is it, Bobby thinks. She gets to take all her stuff but he’s stuck in this shitty flat where everything reminds him of her. She hadn’t been able to take the memories, too. How’s he supposed to live here when their life together is etched into the foundation, threatening to seep through the walls without warning?

At night, he gets stoned and crashes on the couch and loses himself in those fucking Christmas lights again. Because if he doesn’t let himself, he can’t think about spending the holidays alone. And he can’t think about that, because it’s enough to kill him.

The last thought he has before he drifts to sleep is that he’s going to wrap the Christmas gifts he’d already bought her. He’s going to wrap them and he’s going to leave them in a pile in the corner, just in case she comes back.

Just in case.

_Don’t you think it might be best, love?_


	3. the reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a decision to be made.

On Tuesday evening, Bobby fights off his nerves and those tiny, discouraging voices in the back of his head as he strolls into Tesco. He grabs a basket and heads toward the produce. It’s cold over there, and every now and then the misting system spritzes him with cool water. Helpful for his anxiety, sure, but it’s fucking snowing outside. Bobby thinks it’s cold enough.

His eyes scan the selection in front of him and he grabs at few things and puts them back. He hasn’t figured out yet what to make, and whatever inspiration he’d hoped to find as he stood amongst the fruits and vegetables isn’t coming to him. Scotland was in the thick of winter now; would she want soup? Bobby can’t remember if he has ever seen her eat soup before, but he’s sure she must have. But maybe she’s been eating too much soup lately – you know, winter and all – and she’s sick of it, and then she’ll be sick of Bobby for making her eat it again, and this whole plan will have gone to shit.

And, yeah, he’s overthinking this.

“Hey, mate!” Bobby calls to a scrawny, teenaged looking kid with pimples and a Tesco shirt and a pin with his name on it.

The kid – Iain, his name tag says once he’s close enough – gives Bobby enough of a look that he knows immediately he recognizes him. Doesn’t seem the type, Bobby thinks, but he got over the shock of his newfound celebrity status a long time ago.

“How can I help you?”

Bobby grabs a head of broccoli. “Is this fresh?”

“Um, I would assume—”

“I mean, broccoli  _ is _ in season this time of year, but how long has  _ this _ particular broccoli been sitting here?”

Iain stares at him, probably wondering where the camera crew was hiding. How was he supposed to know the timeline of  _ that _ specific head of broccoli? “I don’t know.”

Bobby’s eyes widen. “You don’t? Do you know about any of the other ones?”

“No…?”

“No?” He can’t serve her bad broccoli. Like, what if he gives her food poisoning? Any hopes of getting back together would be dashed immediately. “Do you have any fresh broccoli in the back?”

Iain just keeps staring. “All the produce is fresh, sir.”

“I thought you didn’t know?” Bobby asks, his eyes narrowing.

“It comes in early in the morning and then the stockers put the fresh produce out. We throw away whatever’s left after closing.”

Bobby mulls this over. After a few painfully awkward moments, he sighs and rips a plastic produce bag from a nearby holder. “All right, Iain – I’m trusting you with my life here, mate.”

This is too much pressure to put on a kid whose parents probably forced him to get this job, and if Iain could read minds, he’d most certainly agree. “Well, I mean, is it brown? Like, it looks decent, yeah?”

It looks like perfectly normal broccoli, to be honest. No brown spots, no mushy stem, no strange odor. The pair of them know this, of course, but Bobby’s a nervous wreck and Iain keeps his feet planted on the floor and repeats a mantra about customer service in his head.

“Sure, yeah,” Bobby says. He ties a knot in the produce bag and tosses it in his basket. “Thanks for the help, Iain.” He slaps the slack-jawed teenager on the back as he leaves.

He grabs a few more things as he navigates the aisles – a bottle of red wine, a box of pasta, a packet of chicken breasts, a small carton of heavy cream (so he’s making an alfredo, he supposes) – and stops dead in his tracks once he rounds the corner into the refrigerated section.

They’d gone shopping together late one night after she got home from work. “No more takeaway,” she’d moaned, flopping onto the couch face-first. They’d walked there, hand in hand, as she told him all about her day and all her stresses. Even then, Bobby had no idea what he was going to make – all he knew was how nice it felt to hold her hand, how much it felt like that one time in Spain when they ran up and down the aisles and kissed against the shelves and all the crisps and soup cans fell to the floor. So they wandered the aisles aimlessly, picking up whatever they wanted, and didn’t pay any mind to the time.

Then she got that twinkle in her eye – the mischievous one he loved so much – and told Bobby to go grab his own buggy.

“What for?” he asked, an eyebrow cocked, but he’d started walking to get one anyway.

“We’re going to race,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

So they did. They laughed until their stomachs hurt, buggies ramming into one another as each of them tried to get around the corners first, ignoring the glares from the employees who didn’t get paid nearly enough to put up with two adult-sized children. He’d stopped and taken a picture of her – hair bellowing behind her as she sped by the dairy in designer heels, still dressed to the nines in her work attire – and posted it to Instagram.

_ decided to put all my eggs in this one’s basket x _

Those had been the glory days, Bobby thinks. Before things got bad, before everything went to shit and they both let it. He still looks at that picture sometimes, reads all the cute comments.

_ Ouch, only decided that now? I decided that a long time ago babes ;) _

Bobby stares at the array of eggs for a long time, wondering if she’d changed her mind. She’d told him she didn’t want to fall in love with someone else, but something like that’s easy to say when you’re in pain and it all feels raw. And, really, he couldn’t blame her if she wanted to give up for good; if she saw him tomorrow and decided going back down that road wasn’t worth it, if she thought it’d only lead to more pain.

Stupidity has taken over, he thinks, because he hasn’t learned a thing, hasn’t tempered his expectations at all. There’s a quiet confidence bubbling beneath the surface. He knows he can fix this, just like he’d known it the day Louis had come by to get her things, and he’s up for the challenge. Just like winning Love Island, right?

Except, as soon as she texts him on Wednesday afternoon to say she’ll be by around six, he’s paralyzed. He can’t remember how to cook fuck-all, doesn’t remember why he’d bought that stupid broccoli, can’t seem to find his favorite cooking spoon. It’s like his first day of culinary school all over again. His quiet confidence has been replaced by sheer ineptitude because, even if he’d been up for the challenge, apparently his brain hadn’t gotten the memo.

“Of all the fuckin’ days,” he moans, his head tipping backwards to rest against the refrigerator door.

This particular brand of paralyzed panic lasts all day. Even after four phone calls to his mother – “I have to salt the water, right? For the pasta?” to which she’d replied, “Are you on drugs, Robert?” and, god, he wishes he was – he still feels jittery and too big for his body. He’d at least managed to deep clean both the flat (and finally wash his sheets) and himself. He’s cleaned up nice, he thinks, even if he’d called his mother again to ask if it’d be too much to wear the jumper she’d gotten him for his birthday last year.

“Seriously, Bobby, are you on drugs? Is that why she left you?” she’d asked, and he’d decided to hang up on her for the first time in his life.

Regardless of his mother, he wears the jumper with a pair of nice jeans and a pair of suede trainers. It’s a simple kind of handsome, the kind his gran would find endearing, so he snaps a photo and sends it to his sister for reassurance since he can’t rely on his mum.

** _You look like someone’s grandad lmao_ **

**Fuck off no I don’t**

…

**Should I change then???**

Bobby’s in the midst of sending a third text, explaining all the ways his life is now ruined because she’s abandoned him, when the doorbell chimes. And, well, he’s about ready to shit his pants so he might have to change whether his sister thinks it best or not.

With every step he gets closer to the door, he tries to think up a good enough excuse for there being no dinner. He’d gotten ill. Work had kept him late and he’s only just gotten home. Jonno came by while Bobby was in the shower and ate it all. It might’ve contained food poisoning so he had to toss it, of course, because he’d never want to make her sick.

Opening the door feels like moving in slow motion. He registers the blustery wind that makes its way inside, feels the goosebumps that raise on his arms. The contrast of the street lamps against the dark of winter. The sound of a car horn from a few streets away. A few rogue snowflakes that have caught in her tousled hair. The pink wool Burberry coat that’s tightly wrapped around her — the coat she’d lusted after for months, the one Bobby had promised to buy her. (Once it went on sale, of course; even if he’d won Love Island, he still thought it was absurd to spend £2,500 on a coat.)

What registers most is how he feels, like the air has been knocked out of him. But in a good way, he thinks.

His eyes move downward and he can’t help the guffaw that escapes his mouth.

“Did you really bring takeaway?”

She beams, and it’s nearly blinding. God, she’s fucking beautiful. “‘Course I did. Knowing you, you’ve probably got yourself in such a fuss over this dinner that you haven’t cooked at all.”

His cheeks grow warm. “Er, yeah—“

“I knew it. You gonna let me in? It’s fuckin’ freezing out here.”

Bobby moves aside and ushers her in, grabbing her coat, a cashmere scarf, and both of her gloves as she hands them to him. By the time he’s got everything hung up and neat, he hears dishes clanging and drawers opening and closing in the kitchen. He rounds the corner and just watches, amazed at how she’s still in her element, completely unfazed by him and the situation and all its implications. He wonders if the room feels light to her, too; if she also feels like she’s walking on clouds.

“Can I help?” he asks. When she turns to face him, his breath hitches. Her cheeks are rosy and windburned, but all the contours of her face are the same, still etched into his brain. Even if he went blind, he’d be able to draw every single one from memory.

She ignores his question. “Couch or table?” she counters.

He thinks back to all those nights they ate together on the couch, playing 20 Questions with the telly on mute and her feet in his lap. Bobby would over-exaggerate his stories to make her laugh; her honesty would be raw as she detailed all her answers. Bobby could listen to her talk for hours, and most of the time he did.

His voice is small as he asks, “Like before?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, handing him two containers of food. “Like before.”

He sets the food on the counter and pulls her into a hug before he can think twice. She still smells the same — L’eau Rosée by Miu Miu, because it makes her feel important and expensive — and this knowledge feels significant somehow. Relief floods him as she wraps her arms around him, her hands balling up the thick fabric of his jumper.

“I missed you,” he says into her hair, and he pretends he doesn’t hear her sniffle. He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Never thought I’d ever do this again.”

She pulls away just enough to search his face, connect the dots of his freckles in her mind. A cold hand cups his cheek and he nuzzles into it out of habit. “I missed you too, Bobby.”

His head moves to the side to kiss her palm. “Let’s not get all melty too soon. Dinner first.”

She smiles, and Bobby can’t help but notice that it reaches her eyes. The twinkle is back.

They eat mostly in silence, occasional small talk filling up the quiet when it starts to feel just a little bit awkward. He asks about the flight, she asks about his family. They discuss the weather because that’s a thing adults do, not because either of them particularly care. It’s January and it’s snowing and it’s cold everywhere. Finally, Bobby asks about work. Timidly, of course, because he doesn’t miss the way she flinches at the question. As if he’ll blame her for before.

“You said you were in town for a business trip?”

A smile plays on her lips. “Oh, is that what I said? Meant to say interview,” she says with all the nonchalance in the world. “Easy to mistake the two.”

Rice flies out of Bobby’s mouth as he chokes. “Interview? You mean—“

“Yeah,” she says. Soft, almost bashful. “I, um — I left my old job last week after I spoke to you. They’d let me work remotely from London but it was still just as chaotic. And I just... I kept thinking that this stupid fucking job had cost me my relationship, cost me  _ you _ .” She takes a breath and sets an empty container on the table. Her hands busy themselves in the blanket across the back of the couch. “So I talked to my boss, told her I needed something different, couldn’t keep going at that pace.” A small laugh, almost bitter. “We talked for a long time, actually. She rang me the next day and said she’d lined up an interview for me with an old colleague of hers if I was interested, the job was back in Glasgow but it’d be better work for the same pay.”

It’s a lot for Bobby to process. “Lass...”

“I figured even if you didn’t want to see me I’d still need a change, you know? I mean, fuck, Bobby, I probably would’ve stroked out before I turned thirty at the rate I was going.”

All Bobby can say is, “I would never have said no to seeing you.”

She smiles. “I was bricking it. Didn’t know what I was gonna do if you didn’t but they offered me the job anyway. Get my own flat on the opposite side of the city, I guess.”

“Did you? Get the job, I mean.”

Her smile grows wider. “Yeah,” she says. “I did.”

Remember how to breathe, he tells himself. But he still feels like he’s suffocating nonetheless. Her words are so big. “Oh. Wow. That’s, uh — wow.”

She nudges him with her foot, still smiling. Maybe even bigger than before. “What, no congratulations? No happy dance?”

A few seconds of silence. “What does it mean? For us?”

Her smile falters but her disposition doesn’t change. “Right. We should probably talk about that.”

A lightbulb goes off in Bobby’s head. “20 Questions?” he asks. His turn to smile.

“Wine?”

Bobby nods, detangling their legs and knocking their knees together as he stands. “Of course. I picked up a bottle just for this very occasion.” He fetches two wine glasses from a cabinet as he says, “Very expensive, you know. The best bottle they had.”

When he knows she’s not looking, he rips the Tesco label from the bottle and crumples it, tossing it in the garbage bin. He fills each glass halfway before reconsidering and filling them nearly to the top. Yes, he’s been drinking too much lately and his liver may never recover, but if that’s the case he might as well enjoy it one last time.

Wine in hand, and once Bobby’s back under the blanket and their legs are tangled again, she asks, “Do you want to ask or answer first?”

“Answer.” His go-to choice, which she immediately rolls her eyes at. “What?” he laughs. “Makes me feel like a proper celebrity, answering all your questions.”

She laughs, too. “I’m going to ask you a big one just to make you suffer, then.” She pretends to think for a moment, pointer finger rubbing her chin. “Why do you think we broke up?”

“Oh, you weren’t joking. Alright, then.” He stares at the wall behind her head and tries to steady his breathing. “I felt neglected, I guess. You were working so much and it was so stupid but I... I felt jealous of your job. Of your success. Because I was still at the hospital and you were important now — you weren’t just some person off a reality show anymore like me. That’s all I had. You had a proper job, knew what you wanted to do with your life.” Bobby sighs and feels like crying. “I still don’t, you know? So I guess I stopped trying to fix it. Maybe out of spite? I guess I figured, like, if you were the one working all the time, the one neglecting me, then you should be the one to fix it.

“The day we had that row, I — I was so angry, lass, but I was also hurt. I didn’t want you to leave, never wanted to be without you. I just lashed out.” He finally looks at her, with her kind eyes and pink lips and staggered breathing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—“

She leans over and cups his face again. “Shh. You don’t have to apologize, love. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

“I broke up with you.”

“We kind of did it together, no? I know I wasn’t good to you those last few months. My job never should’ve come before you because never in a million years would it have been more important.” She sighs. “Do you remember what I said the night of the finale? After we won, when they asked if I was going to split the money with you?”

“‘I could have all the money in the world, but if I didn’t have him I’d still be poor.’” Bobby smiles, recalling the chaos of that day. He hadn’t doubted her even for a second.

“I still mean that. And I’m trying, you know? To fix it. I think sometimes I used to stay at work later than I had to because I couldn’t come home and face you. I knew you were hurting and I just... I felt so guilty. I knew I’d push you away and I just let it happen and I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to feel unloved.” Tears pool in her eyes and Bobby wipes them away with his thumbs. “You didn’t deserve any of it, Bobby.”

A few more seconds of silence. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “We both bungled it, but it’s okay. We’re okay.”

She fans herself, wiping the corners of her eyes with the sleeves of her jumper, and takes a very large gulp of wine. “Your turn.”

Bobby’s voice is small: “Was I a good boyfriend to you?”

“Yes, of course,” she says without hesitation. “You think you weren’t?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I? I know I made mistakes, right? I thought I was a good one, but I kept thinking, like, would a better person have fought for you? Was I really that great of a boyfriend if I broke your heart?”

“You were —  _ are _ ,” she corrects herself, then furrows her brow. “We really need to figure out these tenses. Are we back together or not?”

And, yep, that was his girl. Straight to the point and right on target. It complements him, Bobby thinks, because he’s all faux-confidence and what-ifs and growing pains and she isn’t any of those things. She always says what she means and is honest to a fault. And if he’d truly been a good boyfriend to her, it was because she’d made him a better man.

“Do you want to be?” He pretends he’s not bricking it as he asks this.

She reaches out and grabs his hand, drawing shapes on his trembling palm. “I — yeah, of course I do. I mean, obviously we need to talk this out more and figure things out, but I just wanted to know where we stand.”

Bobby grins. “Right, yeah. Unfortunately you’ll have to pack up all those fancy designer clothes you got and drive them all the way back home—“ both of their breaths hitch when he says that word, “—in, like, your posh Range Rover. The neighbors will think you’re a Beckham, and—“

She snorts. “My what? Bobby, I bought a fuckin’ Prius.”

“Yeah, no, that’s no good,” he says, his nose scrunching. “You’ll have to exchange it for a Range Rover posthaste. I already told the neighbors you were off in London becoming a billionaire so a Prius simply won’t do.”

She’s full-on wheezing now as she whacks him. “Why would you tell them that, you goof?”

His cheeks redden. “They, uh — they asked about you. Wondered where you’d got off to. I didn’t know what to tell them.” She rolls her eyes. “So you will? You’ll come home?”

“I’m not going to exchange my car, but...” Her eyes flick up, meeting his. “Yeah, I’d like to. If you’ll have me.”

That look. It amazes Bobby just how quickly it’s able to bring him to his knees, even after all this time. He leans forward and she meets him halfway. Their lips meet in a brief, tender kiss — the kind that says so much more than it lets on. And, well, Bobby’s still Bobby, because he’s immediately aware of how long it’s been since he’s jerked off. He drags the blanket further over his lap.

“Of course I’ll have you,” he says, pressing a smaller kiss to her forehead. “Preferably forever.”

Her eyes flutter closed. “Forever sounds nice.”

They continue their game — happier questions this time — until their glasses are empty, refilled, and empty again. Maybe it’s the wine, maybe it’s his girl, but Bobby’s drunker than drunk. His cheeks are warm and he can’t feel his lips, but they’re laughing and touching and he can’t remember feeling so complete in a very long time.

“Oh, oh, I’ve got one!” Bobby shouts. “What’s your favorite memory of me?”

Her face is bright, cheeks just as pink as his, and Bobby thinks she looks like an angel. “God, there’s so many!” She thinks for a minute, just a few seconds too long so Bobby nudges her with his foot. “Oh, I know! Do you remember when we went to visit Chelsea and we went to that awful bar?”

Bobby groans. “How could I forget? That bird with the blue hair got sick all over Chels’s shoes and she cried.”

“Yeah, place was shit, but you got utterly pissed that night and did karaoke—“

Bobby groans again. “That’s your favorite memory? Of all the things you could’ve picked!”

She swats at him. “Oh, stop! Nah, it was just... you were up there singing ‘Careless fucking Whisper’ of all things and I just remember having this moment of clarity where I was like, ‘I’m gonna marry him. This silly man who’s so pissed he can barely stand, doing George Michael karaoke — that’s the one I’m gonna marry.’”

“You never told me this,” he says, voice thick with affection. “I would’ve sang it a million times if I knew that! Like, every single day.”

Her nose scrunches. “Yeah, no, I think it would’ve lost its charm.”

Bobby turns toward the kitchen and yells, “Alexa! Play ‘Careless Whisper’!” Except Alexa can’t really understand his accent. “Alexa!” It beeps, letting Bobby know it’s listening. “Play ‘Careless Whisper’.”

“I’m sorry,” the device says, “I can’t under—“

“Play ‘Careless Whisper’!” he shouts again, slightly annoyed.

“Playing Breakup Playlist.”

Bobby doesn’t have time to be horrified, because she’s already howling with laughter as the first notes of “More Than This” by One Direction plays. And he’s not sure what’s more embarrassing: that he’d made a breakup playlist at all, or that he’d put One Direction on it.

“I’m gonna vomit,” she says, clutching her stomach, tears streaming down her face. “Oh my fucking  _ god _ , Bobby. One Direction?”

Normally he might get a little irritated at being poked fun at, but he’s drunk and he’s got his girl back and everything feels warm. So he just shrugs, his cheeks redder than before. “If I can actually get this stupid thing to play ‘Careless Whisper’, will you dance with me?”

She smiles. “Alexa, play ‘Careless Whisper.’ On repeat.”

The unmistakable sound of that saxophone fills the flat as Bobby stands, unsteady on his feet, and holds his hand out to her. She grabs it, their hands fitting perfectly together, and Bobby sings the words he knows as best he can. He doesn’t really know this song, had basically chosen it at random, and the words had been on a screen for him then so he’d been able to wing it. But it doesn’t matter, not to her, because Bobby’s singing and they’re dancing and they’re together.

“You really love me singing this song that much?” he asks, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.

“Mhm,” she mumbles into his neck. Her breath is warm and sends a chill up his spine.

“We should go see him, then. This George Michael bloke. I’ll serenade you in front of a whole stadium.”

Bobby’s grinning, thinks he’s absolutely nailing it in the romance department. No man alive is more romantic than him.

“Oh,” she says. Her body vibrates as she tries to tries to contain her laughter. “Oh no.”

“What?” he asks. “Why are you laughing? I thought I was being a proper melt.”

“You don’t know?”

Bobby frowns. “Know what?”

“He, uh — he’s dead, Bobby.”

“Who?”

“George Michael.”

Bobby’s eyes narrow. “The bloke singing this song? Are you sure?”

She’s shaking with laughter again. “Yes, I’m sure. How did you not know this?”

Bobby stops dancing and stares blankly around the living room. “He’s really dead? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“I mean, it was pretty big news, babe.” She smirks. “I guess it’s like he said: ‘Ignorance is kind, there’s no comfort in the truth.’”

Bobby frowns again. “George Michael didn’t say that.”

Her face is expressionless as she stares at him. “Those are literally the lyrics to ‘Careless Whisper’.”

They debate the deadness of George Michael (the singer, not the one from Arrested Development) for a while until Bobby fetches his phone to Google it. Once he’s satisfied that he’s actually, truly dead, he grabs the bottle of wine from the kitchen counter and pours a little bit of it into the sink.

“Why are you pouring your super expensive wine in the sink?” she asks, never missing a beat. That smirk will be the death of him, he’s sure of it.

“For George!” he says, toasting the bottle into the air. “A proper British icon.”

She wraps her arms around him from behind, her cheek pressing against his back. “You didn’t even know he was dead.”

Bobby clicks his tongue. “Did you ever stop to consider I actually did know and I was just so traumatized I blocked it out? Hm? And all this time you’ve just been mocking me as I’m traumatized all over again?”

“Oh no,” she says. Her hand dips beneath his jumper and she scratches at his chest lightly. “How could I ever make it up to you?” Fuck, she’s practically purring. Just the tone of her voice is enough to make him nearly cum in his jeans. 

“Um—“

“Maybe,” she says, standing on the tips of her toes to whisper in his ear, “you’ll come up with some ideas if we go upstairs?”

And, yeah, Bobby thinks he can do that. For the rest of his life, preferably.

Her teeth graze his earlobe and, no, he’s not going to make it all the way upstairs. Not going to make it any further than this spot in the kitchen, so it’ll have to do. He turns around and wraps his hand around the back of her neck, guiding her lips to his. They’re drunk and it’s a little rough, but his body feels like it’s on fire, brain can’t focus on anything other than the way her mouth tastes and the way her body’s pressing against him.

And then his stupid brain betrays him, makes his eyes flick over to that corner of the room he’d kept her Christmas presents instead of focusing on her flushed appearance and those wet, swollen lips. And then his drunk brain also yells out, “Wait! Presents!”

Fuck, he’s so hard it hurts, but they’re just sitting there and he never thought he’d get the chance to give them to her so he has to do this.

“Presents?” she asks slowly, as if he’d been speaking a different language. Her eyes are still half-lidded and Bobby really, really aches to be inside of her, but. You know. Presents.

“Yeah, lass,” he says, adjusting his dick in his jeans. “I, uh — kept them. There,” he says, pointing at the stack in the corner. “Just in case.”

“They’re wrapped,” she says. It sounds like she’s going to cry.

“Yeah,” Bobby responds stupidly.

His hand rests in the small of her back as he guides her back into the living room. It’s only two presents — a long, rectangular box and a smaller, more square one — and they don’t look very impressive. On top of it all, he’d been too depressed to go out and buy gift wrap so he’d used old newspapers. They  _ really  _ don’t look impressive. But her hands unwrap them neatly anyway, one seam at a time.

And, well, if Bobby’s heart swells a little bit as she gasps, who could blame him?

He’d put together a photo album that spanned their whole relationship. By some stroke of luck, he’d been able to get in touch with one of the Directors of Photography from the show. She’d given him a few raw files he’d been able to crop and use to his liking: the first time they’d met, all the challenges, her folded in his lap on the beanbags, a still from the first time he told her he loved her, their final date against a sunset backdrop, them blinded by lights and confetti as they won the show. Pictures of the flat when it was empty. Candids he’d taken and never showed her. Selfies they took together, smiling at the camera and each other, and group selfies they took with their mates. Those photos from her graduation. Ones from events, holidays with their families.

They’d managed to pack so much life and love into so little time.

“Bobby...”

He wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her against him. “Do you like it?” he asks, staring at that same photograph he’d thought about yesterday, the one of her in the supermarket.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

She doesn’t want to put it down, so he takes it from her gently and urges her to open the other one. He’d had to use a lot of fucking newspaper on it so it takes her a while, but once it’s finally opened—

“You didn’t.”

He laughs as she unfolds the same exact Burberry coat that’s hanging by the door. “I promised you I’d buy it, didn’t I?”

More tears. “Was it on sale, at least?”

“Nah,” he says. “Full price. Only the best for my girl.”

Her expression is pillow soft as she thanks him over and over, all the while musing what she’s going to do with two pink wool coats. Bobby’s muttering nonsense ideas in return as she disappears for a few seconds, returning with an envelope in hand.

“Your turn.”

“My turn? You brought my Christmas present too?”

She whacks him in the chest with the envelope before handing it over. “Of course I did.” As Bobby runs a finger under the seal, her expression grows anxious. “It’s not much.”

Inside are two airline vouchers for a round trip flight to Washington, D.C.

“I mean, I love it, but—“

“The world’s largest ball pit is there,” she says hurriedly. “In a museum. When I rewatched the show I realized we never did your perfect date idea.”

It’s the most perfect gift Bobby has ever received, and he tells her as much in between the million kisses he plants all over her face. She’s laughing, trying to push him away, and it sounds like music. Sounds like George Michael and millions of plastic balls and the clanking of wine glasses and the words  _ I love you _ . Feels like a Burberry coat and sun-kissed skin and the warm, tingly feeling of being in love.

That night, they fall asleep together for the first time in a long time. They wake up slowly and take their time making love, remembering the ins and outs of each other’s bodies, and there’s no arguments in the kitchen this time when Bobby calls a redo and makes coffee and pancakes. They apologize to each other a million more times and admit their shortcomings and make plans for the future. Bobby calls his mum and tells her there’s hope for him yet, he’s not on drugs and he’s got his girl back, and Louis tells her to fuck off because he’s not driving all her shit back to Glasgow, especially in a Prius. Louis loves his sister, but not that much.

The next time Bobby goes to Tesco, he finds Iain and resists the urge to plant a sloppy, wet kiss on the kid’s cheek. Instead, he thanks him profusely for saving his arse and helping him pick out the perfect head of broccoli, even if he hadn’t actually used it. What Iain doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Once she’s back from London in her impossibly tiny and unimpressive Prius, Bobby helps her carry all her stuff inside and unpacks and puts away whatever she’ll let him. In the bedroom closet, as he’s hanging up both of her extremely pink coats, a white t-shirt falls from the very top shelf.

Yeah, he’d won Love Island, but he’d gotten a whole lot more than a stupid t-shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all I’m kinda sad this is over but I really loved writing it so I’m gonna hold on to those warm, fuzzy feelings.
> 
> This chapter was inspired by “Hard Feelings” by Lorde, the insta groupchat, and the same Burberry coat I’ll never own. Sadly, I don’t think the ball pit is in DC anymore, sorry.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Love u all very much.


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